In Brussels we visited the Musical Instrument Museum.

It is housed within a beautiful art-deco building:
























The museum holds one of the most interesting displays of musical instruments in the world. Visitors are provided with infrared headphones. Standing beside an instrument, you can hear music played by the instrument on the headphones:

Me and Luci went to Brussels and visited.. THE ATOMIUM!



It had just been refurbished and looked just as futuristic as strange as it must have done when it was built in 1958.

Here is a video of the restaurant in the uppermost sphere:



We also went to a Belgian themepark, but it was too expensive so we didn't go in. In the themepark's terms and conditions it said:

"We would like to point out that that the freedom of each of us is limited by respect for the freedom of others."


Which I thought was pretty existential for a themepark.

That's Belgium for you.

At the height of the bird-flu scare we threw caution to the wind and entered the bird-flu surveillance zone in Scotland to visit Luci's Friend Hannah, who's parents live in St. Andrews. Hannah lives in Nicaragua. She and her Nicaraguan freedom fighter boyfriend sung us a song:



The next day we went to the beach:



Also to a children's playground:



We listened to revolutionary records:



And talked politics late into the evening.

I noticed that Hannah's parents' biscuit tin had Che Guevara and Fidel Castro on it:



No one else had ever realised this, and, in all the excitement, red wine got spilled on my favourite tshirt:

There's no such thing as a free lunch.

These are the toilets of poncy restaurant Sketch in Conduit Steet, London.



I promise this is the last toilet related video. At least for a while.

I got this counterfeit Teletubby toy from a little chinese shop in Soho for about three quid (including batteries). It broke a couple of days after this video was taken, but with thanks to this blog, it's legend will burn on long after its candle ever did.

The 2nd Most Powerful Handdryer In The World

is at Gordon's Wine Bar.



Here is the most powerful:

I went to the gentlemen's toilet of The Hamilton Hall JD Wetherspoon's pub in Liverpool Street, London and this is what I found:



All I can assume is that the previous occupant had a nosebleed.

Karaoke King

If there's one thing I've learnt from my brief stint in the music business, it's that all boyband managers secretly want to be in a boyband themselves.

But most are either too old, too ugly, or too untalented.

Here's a video to illustrate my point:



This footage is from 'Karaoke with Lucifire' in the Caberet Tent at Latitude Festival, last weekend in Suffolk.

It was a really great festival, perhaps a little undercapacity at times:



But I'm sure even the first Glastonbury wasn't crammed.

I did my new lecture 'Did Priya Pathak Ever Get Her Wallet Back?'

As bird flu hit the UK, we found a pelican in the park. I was reticent to get too close.

Never the bridemaid, always the bride.

Went to Luci's sister's wedding in Cambridge. Really rather unconventional in many ways.

But lovely nevertheless.























It was Luci's job to sing the flower duet with her cousin.




My role was to make a little model of the groom to put on top of the cake.



Uncanny, if you ask me.